There was a minor problem with Belkar's plan.
Cast[]
- Belkar Bitterleaf ◀ ▶
- Vaarsuvius ◀ ▶
- Belkar's Trial Guard ▶
Transcript[]
- Panel 1
Belkar: Hey V, before they bring me back to jail, I just wanted—
Vaarsuvius: There is no need.
- Panel 2
Belkar: Huh?
Vaarsuvius: I know that neither of us excels at social situations, so suffice to say that I accept your thanks for saving you from Miko.
- Panel 3
Belkar: My... thanks? Are you kidding me??
Belkar: You ruined everything!!
- Panel 4
Belkar: All that work to push her over the edge, and you interrupt it right before she finally snaps!
Belkar: I guess I can always start over, but so much work wasted!
- Panel 5
Vaarsuvius: Well I'm terribly sorry, but I thought she was going to kill you!
Belkar: No one pays you to think, Ears!
Vaarsuvius: ...They actually pay me to do nothing BUT think, you moron!
- Panel 6
Belkar: Look, last time I checked the cleric spell list, Raise Dead was a 5th-level spell. Durkon can cast it like 3-4 times a day.
Belkar: And he'd do it, too, because he's a sucker. I mean, he just healed me up for free.
- Panel 7
Belkar: But losing your paladinhood through your own willful actions? Do you have any idea how hard that is to reverse?
Belkar: Goodbye, Miko the Paladin—hello, Miko the Fighter-Without-Bonus-Feats.
- Panel 8
Belkar: It would've been HILARIOUS.
Vaarsuvius: I see.
- Panel 9
Vaarsuvius: And how would your cunning master plan have accounted for the fact that Durkon would have required 5000 gp worth of diamonds as a material component to power the Raise Dead spell?
Vaarsuvius: Diamonds, I hasten to add, that he does not, in fact, possess?
- Panel 10
Belkar: Well, uh...
Belkar: Obviously, I would have...
- Panel 11
Belkar glares at Vaarsuvius.
- Panel 12
Belkar: SHUT UP!
Vaarsuvius: I think I may owe the tables of the world an apology...
D&D Context[]
- Raise Dead is a 5th-level Cleric spell that revives a character, as long as that character has not been dead longer than one day per level.
- Vaarsuvius: And how would your cunning master plan have accounted for the fact that Durkon would have required 5000 gp worth of diamonds as a material component to power the Raise Dead spell?
- The spell requires 5000 gp worth of diamonds to cast.
- Vaarsuvius: And how would your cunning master plan have accounted for the fact that Durkon would have required 5000 gp worth of diamonds as a material component to power the Raise Dead spell?
- Belkar claims that Durkon can cast 5th level spells 3-4 times per day, which would make him a minimum of 12th level and a maximum of 18th level at the time of this strip.
- Paladins lose their god-granted abilities if they commit an Evil act. A Paladin without those abilities is not very good.
Trivia[]
- The final line delivered by Vaarsuvius in the comic is a callback to a line in the previous comic, where V compared Belkar's intelligence with that of a table.
- This is the first appearance of Belkar's Trial Guard.